Referral Criteria – Stammering

Conditions in scope

Targeted SLT

Referrals will be considered for children and young people who are stammering. All referrals are triaged with consideration given to the impact of the stammer. This includes:

Pre-school:

• Impact on behaviour, such as frustration, hitting out and withdrawal
• Lacking in means to communicate such as signing, gesture and words
• High level of concern by parents, pre-school setting

School age:

• Difficulty in making and maintaining friendships
• Difficulty processing information and instructions
• Impact on behaviour, such as frustration and withdrawal
• Difficulty expressing needs, wants , feelings and ideas
• High level of concern by parents and/or school

The SLT service uses Care Aims principles to support its clinical decision making at triage, assessment and through any intervention offered. This approach identifies the impact and clinical risk to the child or young person and supports the decision as to whether SLT is the appropriate service at that time. Please ensure that you indicate within the Request for Service form the impact the difficulty is having/perceived to be having on the child or young person.

Pre-request requirements

Early Years toolkit ages up to 5
Stammering school age toolkit – Stammering

Supporting documentation

Please review the list below and ensure that you have the appropriate documentation available to submit with your request – items in bold are mandatory (by age appropriateness):

• Completed Request for Services Form (to be completed by requester)
• Completed Devon ICS Information Sharing Consent Form (to be completed by parent/carer/young person)
• Early Years resource pack for children aged up to 5 years – summary/report of completed activities with outcomes
• School Years toolkit for children and young people in full time education up to 18 years – summary/report of completed activities with outcomes

Guidance and information

To ensure that your request is processed quickly, and the child or young person is accepted into the service as soon as possible it is important that you give as much information as you can in the Request for Services form.

Among other things, we will need to know:

• What the impact of the difficulty is on the child or young person at home and at school
• What has already been tried to help the child or young person, with the supporting evidence as described above
• What goals you have discussed with the child or young person and their parents/carers

Forms that do not have sufficient information in them to allow us to undertake effective clinical screening will be returned to the requester indicating the additional information required.

Locations

We work from a variety of locations around the county, and if a request for service is accepted we will offer the child or young person an appointment at the venue closest/most appropriate for them. This might be a local clinic, the child or young person’s school, nursery or children’s centre, and might in some cases be their home.